The Humpty Dumpty Heart

I gather these supplies in a few slow deliberate motions~

Dried Lavender (from the holiday festival in Bellingham)
Hot milk (organic whole milk with a date, the dried fruit, in it, in a tea cup)
The heating pad warmed for three minutes
Stripey socks from Jessica Randall
A cookie which is more like a little pillow of a cake with white and chocolate frosting
Knowledge that my Mom or Jason will fly here at a moment’s notice
Knowledge that my mate will be home tonight
The blue fleece mermaid blanket from E.
The lavender sachet with the winged pig that says Miracles Happen
My notebook and pen
The phone

As I am gathering these items E calls and I tell her I will call her back in 5-7 minutes

I lie down with my supplies and talk to E on her birthday while I wait to get better.

Pain and prednisone served to knock my humpty dumpty heart off the wall today.

My heart got kicky and strange.

Last night, thanks to kid’s liquid benadryl, I slept but because I slept then I was “running behind” and took the prednisone later than I would have. And the pain Roared up in my head. And my heart went arrhythmic, just like a pump having trouble. And I said ‘Darn. Now that is just the kind of thing that really will kill you and how annoying is that.’

So I sat very still and calmed and calmed and calmed myself.
And pressed my hand into my chest and my breast, like I was laying my hand firmly on a shaken animal.

I sat very very still and said Calm, slow.
Calm slow.
Calm.
Slow.

The heart like a manatee.

Calm slow.

Every ten seconds or so it was kicking a huge beat. Kerchunk.

I pushed it down and warmed and cupped it.

Calm, slow.

***

Tomorrow there is the MRI if I can stand it. A call to the neurologist to see what she advises on the prednisone dose.

And I called Mt Sinai genetic testing lab in New York and spoke to a kind woman named Dana, and she is sending me the paperwork for the triple test for porphyria that I want done. It tests for the three most common kinds.

I think I now have Advanced Porphyria.

If its not that, it is Porphyria’s twin.
If it’s not that, it is Advanced Something.

But I believe this,

That all the Queens’ Horses, and all the Queen’s Men,
Will put Humpty Dumpty Back together again.

I brushed myself off from the fall.
I climbed back up on the wall.





(4-6-11)